Art Expo’s Mediocre Year: Is the Management to Blame?
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Some of the major Chicago dealers at Art Expo, including Lori Kaufman of Hokin-Kaufmann Gallery and Richard Gray of Richard Cray Gallery, declined comment about the success of this year’s Art Expo or their feelings about its management but said they had conveyed their concerns to fair officials.
Even the organizers concede that this year’s expo fell short of expectations. “It was a real mediocre fair,” says Tom Blackman, executive director of the Lakeside Group, which runs Art Expo. Blackman says sales were well below levels reached in 1989 and 1990, and attendance was around 30,000, down from 36,500 last year and 43,000 the year before. Blackman says he doesn’t see signs of a major recovery in the art market anytime soon.
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Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bruce Powell.
